I’d have to say this is a good season on balance, especially as there are several excellent shows (four on Monday alone) that have a chance to make my top 10 list for 2012. But the same thing is true that’s always been true about Chihayafuru – this is the show I look forward to most every week. This is the show I enjoy watching most, the show which touches me emotionally in the deepest way. In much the same way it combines the best elements of shoujo and shounen, it also successfully combines so many narrative styles – comedy, romance, drama, action. It might not be the funniest or scariest or most exciting series on the air (although it might just be, in that last case) but it’s the one that masters all those elements in the most skillful way. To paraphrase Taichi’s catch phrase, Chihayfuru is a Jack of all Trades, and Master of all.

It was inevitable that when Arata re-entered the story in a meaningful way it was going to be dramatic, but Chihayafuru really did the moment justice when it finally happened at the Yoshino Qualifier. Of course as always, the timing was the worst humanly possible for Taichi. If that poor boy goes to the shrine on New Year’s his fortune must say “bad luck” every time, because timing is not his friend. With Chihaya – told she’s about to fail out and be forced to repeat a year – and Nishida studying under the watchful eye of tutor Tsutomu-kun, Taichi – who was the only one who had more at stake than simple practice for the Eastern Master/Queen Qualifier – went to Yoshino on his own to take his last chance to make the leap to Class A. And it seemed to be going well, as he breezed through his first two matches. But then, this is Taichi, so you knew it would all blow up in his face. Harada-sensei points out that Arata has come to compete at the worst moment for Taichi – and even worse, Arata hands Taichi his phone number and E-mail to give to Chihaya. Arata didn’t do it on purpose but that was the worst thing he could have done, and Taichi’s concentration is shattered, causing him to lose in the third round. As this is happening Arata is competing in the Class A tournament (along with Harada-sensei) and Chihaya has ditched Tsutomu, racing off to Yoshino to root for Taichi. Tsutomu’s response to this is a simple and concise text about running away from responsibilities, but the point still hits home.

Here’s where things got intense, sad, and ironic. Taichi was naturally devastated at his loss, distraught at losing his last chance to jump to Class A before the Eastern Qualifier and at having let Arata blow his concentration. Chihaya has gone to Yoshino because, in her own words, she was “worried about Taichi being alone after he won or lost” – yet as soon as Taichi told her Arata was there, she forgot completely about Taichi and let him suffer alone. Not that she displayed any overt romantic feelings for Arata – it was more about studying his Karuta and the reunion of the three childhood friends – but still pretty insensitive on her part (when Tsutomu asks later if Taichi was depressed, she can’t even remember). Yet, being insensitive is so intrinsically part of who she is that I’m not sure Chihaya can be any other way. More than any of the others in the cast, Chihaya is stuck in childhood – her approach to life and to Karuta is simple, direct and often thoughtless. It’s only now that she’s realizing the impact this has on her Karuta – perhaps that will lead her to realize that her personal growth is a victim of her immaturity, too.

As for Arata, he loses to Hiroshi (from Harada’s Shiranami Society – Harada loses in the semi-finals). But then the real drama begins, as he meets up with Taichi. Arata even goes so far as to mention to Taichi – after the latter dries his tears and insists that Arata give Chihaya his number himself – that he hesitated to give his number to Chihaya because he wasn’t sure if she and Taichi were a couple, a notion the startled Taichi denies quickly. There are so many emotional repercussions happening here that it’s staggering – Arata’s effective declaration that he’s interested, Taichi’s effective admission that Chihaya is still available, and the larger dynamic of the three of then being together playing Karuta again. As Taichi himself says, while part of him was angry at Arata, another part of him was thrilled to see him, and to have the old team back together again. I might even go so far as to suggest that in a way, this is the nudge Taichi needed to make his feelings known to Chihaya himself – I get the sense that he was hesitant to do so in Arata’s absence, as it would have been unfair of him to do so and a sort of tainted victory in any case.

The mangaka certainly isn’t doing us any favors in terms of mixed messages. Kana drags Chihaya home to study, and on the way she reads a poem from The Tale of Genji which she states “sounds like a love poem, but is actually about a childhood friend – it sounds just like Arata”. If there’s a theme overriding the episode it’s personal responsibility, and Tsutomu sums it up by quietly scolding Chihaya when she returns – “You have to do the things you don’t want to do before you can do the things you truly want to do.” The words hit home in context – Taichi is the example Tsutomu uses, for the way he works hard at Karuta and manages to rank at the top of his class in grades anyway – and Chihaya takes the message and promises to do what she needs to do not to be held back a grade.

But those words could just as easily be applied to Taichi – what he really wants to do it tell Chihaya he loves her. But before that, he needs to grow up – to accept that he’s been afraid of commitment for his entire life, and to face Arata head on in a battle for Chihaya’s heart rather then hope that battle never comes. Indeed the best scene of the episode is actually the one on the platform between Harada-sensei and Taichi, where Harada offers Taichi the opportunity to advance to Class A based on his two second-place finished in Class B tournaments – something Taichi has earned by right, and which both Nishida and Arata were surprised did not happen. Harada-sensei is very quietly a wonderful character, and he sees what’s happening in Taichi’s heart. The following exchange of dialogue astonishingly captures the very essence of the series and these characters and where they stand, in a few simple words. As Harada thinks to himself “Frustration won’t last forever. Nobody can keep on going without some measure of reward”, an announcement comes over the PA that “an empty train is passing on platform two”. And after a moment Taichi laughs and replies simply that, no, Harada shouldn’t break the society rule and promote him because he’s “Not so much focused on making Class A as becoming someone who doesn’t run away.”

That scene – Harada’s thoughts, the station announcer’s message, Taichi’s reply, Harada-sensei’s reaction – is probably the best I’ve seen in any anime this season. Every thought I’d had about Taichi’s journey (many of which I expressed in last week’s post) was captured in this simple exchange, and it completely validates the experience of watching this series and responding to the character the way so many have. That’s spectacular writing, truly rare and special – maybe the best in a consistently well-written series. It looks at this point as if the anime will wrap up at the Eastern Qualifier, with Arata and Shinobu joining Chihaya in the tournament – but I can’t help but wonder what Taichi’s role in that drama will be. My faith in both the mangaka and the director is strong, and I can only trust that Taichi won’t be an afterthought in that final drama. But for Taichi’s fans as well as the character himself, frustration can’t last forever – indeed, we can’t keep going forever without some measure of reward…

WELP that’s it’, goodbye my faith in humanity, it was nice knowing you but you just got finished off once and for all. Looks like we were wrong all this time to assume people aren’t fundamentally morons, turns out, they are.

Seriously, GC gets 7x the sales of this? How can there be so many humans with such bad taste?

I have zero faith this manga will end well. Probably will end with taichi in his penthouse with his supermodel girlfriend reading a card with chihaya and arata announcing the birth of their sixth kid. I can’t remember a Josei that has ended well.

From what i’ve read of Suetsugo Yuki’s work she likes happy endings but loves torturing her characters along the way. For instance in Flower of Eden the main character Show Spoiler ▼

has to suffer being repeatedly raped by her step brother, bullied at school, and then to add icing to the cake her step brother sells nude pictures of her that he forced her to take during his rapes which are then posted in her classroom for all to see. (and it gets worse after that!!!) It does end well though but man you feel for her.

Chihaya’s almost supermodel already, if Taichi gets with her he’d have cleaned house. What I wish they would go in depth in is the reasons why he likes her. There’s been scarce details about that. So far it seems like they met up again in high school and she’s gorgeous so of course he likes her. Of course lot’s of teenage relationships are based on just physical attraction, but its almost too realistic a route to follow. I’d give major kudos to the author if she went that route though. At this point I much rather prefer watching them mature and overcome their various hardships than any couplings.

If she ends up choosing Arata over Taichi I will be so pissed at her. Taichi has stood by faithfully and supported her every step of the way. She needs to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to Taichi. Sad part is she is clueless how he feels about her and how much it probably hurts him for her to forget all about him once she sees Arata.

Well to be fair to Arata he hasn’t ‘stood by’ Chihaya all this time, although mostly not his fault. He went off to an elite middle school and apparently didn’t keep in touch with Chihaya during that time and only when he met her again in Hight School things between them started happening. Actually that brings up a good point. The Middle School that he went to was supposed to be an elite school with a path to all the best High Schools. I wonder why he ended up being in the same High School as Chihaya?

I don’t feel like the glasses guy, the guy she dated for a brief time, “lost”, per se. They gave it a try, and although she was happy for some time, it was not the type of romantic/intimate love that she wanted in a relationship. They made much better friends, in my opinion. But I can understand your sentiments, and I still feel bad for him, lol.

I felt split on Arata’s loss. One side of me wanted him to destroy everyone at the tournament but another side of me was glad to see that he was just an extraordinary player who was rusty after a long absence of playing Karuta. For me there were two highlights in this episode. One was when Taichi realize how happy he was to see Arata back. Second was his response to Harada-sensei’s offer to promote him to class A. That showed me that he’s changed like how Arata pointed out when they met. He’s no longer taking the easy road but will slug through the hardship to get to where he wants. I did however found it funny that all the effort Taichi put into not directly pursuing Chihaya was for nothing because of Arata’s assumption that the two would be a couple. That made me like Arata more because he didn’t have any delusion that he had a shot with Chihaya due to his absence in her life physically. After that exchange he had with Taichi, I’m no longer hoping for a ArataxChihaya and more comfortable with a TaichixChihaya because now I want to see a ArataxShinobu. Man, talk about a powerhouse team haha.

Arata is still a teenager… But he’s on a par with adult players aspiring to Master levels. I don’t think we will see any of our young karuta players in the Master class before anime ends, and I like as it keeps things quite realistic.

Taichi Tuesday came (well Wednesday for me) and it certainly delivered! I think that this was THE BEST episode so far for Chihayafuru. And I agree about that scene with Harada at the train station. I was tearing up after Taichi’s slump over the note for Chihaya but that scene pushed me over the edge. What got me the most was the way Taichi responded. It was not what I was expecting. It seemed like he grew up all of a sudden. After all the way he treated his girlfriend as he was pined after Chihaya was VERY dickish so you certainly can’t say he has acted very mature so far.

I guess you could be right, but from a viewers perspective you see his girlfriend in Ep1 (i think) and from then on until he finally dumps her a few episodes ago he’s been pining after Chihaya. There was even the lecture that Harada gave him about not two-timing which while it was not particularly about his feelings for Chihaya he ment it for that as well.

Anyway, I think he probably acts like a normal teenager and IMHO he’s one of the most realistic teenagers that I’ve seen portrayed in Anime since .. well I cant think of anyone except perhaps Ko from Cross Game (although he is a little too perfect)

- Arata lost to Hiroshi in the 3rd round, not the semi final, as Harada himself exclaimed that he and Hiroshi both lost in the semi-final…

- Kana was watching the whole time (there’s a freeze frame bonus style scene where Taichi saw Arata for the first time) wearing the very thin disguise (think Clark Kent)

one thing to note: Chihaya mentioning how she rarely sees Arata in a similar fashion to the mentioned poem was endearing (to me) and should’ve have more impact than what was shown, shame Taichi’s impression upon Harada-Sensei with his “not-running-away” line stole the show.

Taichi Tuesday, it’s not overrated. (He’s in a rich family yet he’s not bothering to taking the easy way out. That’s character.)

My impression was that Harada and Arata lost in semi-finals in different sides of the draw, but you might be right – I’ll double-check the dialogue later. I confess I missed Kana in that scene – good eyes.

I was trolling around Animesuki (no account setup there though) when I found it, so it wasn’t me, and I’d take a grain of salt on Harada-sensei’s claim as well (I think I was basing it on CrunchyRoll’s subs)

@Guardian Enzo
You’re right about chihayafuru DVD/BD not selling well… But from my research… it’s actually doing better than “Kimi ni todoke” and “Nodame cantabile”, 2 series from similar genre…
So there is still hope :)

Yup, I second Nico there, where do you get your numbers anyway?If you look at the dvd/bd’s animes list throughout the years in MAL or oricon charts, etc it’s clear that Nodame&Kimitodo sales are totally above Chihayafuru, if i’m not forget even the 1st season of Kimitodo sold over 10K, and the manga sales boost hugely until 1 million copy each vol. While Chihayafuru’s manga sold well(around 200-300K), but it’s nowhere near Nodame&Kimitodo which sold over 1 million copies per vol, makes the two titles with Nana as the only 3 powerhouse shojo/josei mangas in japan right now among Jump’s titles. But let’s just hope though how tiny it is, that there’s still any possibility for 2nd season.

The phone number she has is for his home phone and the e-mail is just his personal e-mail. The number and e-mail he was giving to Taichi was for his cell which she does not have. In fact that was actually one of the personal notes/reminders she made for herself to get back in episode 5 if I recall correctly. Since she left those notes behind I’m pretty sure he’s been giving it a lot of time to read them over and think about it.

well…i love Arata sorry (not) =]
but fair play Taichi has really bad luck and feel sorry for him.
It is rather obvious that someone will have to shout at Chihaya for her to even realise she’s making the two wait for…well forever.

Arata! Oh man he’s already the winner in my book. That guy is the Lelouche of karuta, or maybe the Kakashi. Just cool calm and collected ready to hand out cans of whoop a$$. You basically hope your not on his list of sh*t to f*ck up that day. But it’s like I’ve said! The queen parallels Arata so well. Arata should shack up with her instead. I mean they have the same hair color too! Same with Taichi and Chihaya. Everyone’s happy.

Great episode(well every episode of Chihayafuru was great).. Cant wait to see the upcoming tournament and see who’s gonna be on the finals.. And could there be a chance that Chihaya and Arata will have a game?..

here i am, bawling my eyes out for taichi when i have an exam tomorrow. that said, chihaya’s a dick. i remember enzo saying that if she were a male character, people would be hating her left and right. well, i second that.

Yes, Chihaya fills the role of the driven, super-talented but dense shounen male lead here. And yes, if she were the male lead, she’s be on the business end of tons of fan hate. But just as I often defend those characters, I’ll defend her – she’s dense and insensitive, but nothing she does is mean-spirited – it’s just who she is. I love her, but it’s high time for her to start to grow up.

That said, it’s always been my contention that Taichi is the MC of Chihayafuru. He’s had easily the most development, the most exposure to his inner feelings, and his character arc is the defining one of the series.

I agree – Taichi’s the character that gets developed the most…we get to know his inner thoughts and feelings, and it’s hard not to get drawn close to him… That makes me wonder if he should be the main protagonist instead of Chihaya, or we should simply change the tile to Taichi Tuesdays…lol. This episode is another great one, or some even said, “this is the best” again… I am not 100% convinced that Chihaya has to be there at the tournament simply for creating a reunion, but I can deal with that. Like Guardian Enzo and a lot here, I love the train station scene a lot – the music, the train that comes through without stopping…it’s simply brilliant. I really like Taichi’s response – rather than simply taking a title, he’s not going to give up fighting against himself…proving himself not to be someone who runs away… That reply amazed me, as it did to Harada-sensei…the inner strength that Taichi is seeking as contrast to what he used to or taught to do – quitting when not winning. I also like the scene when Chihaya just simply grabs Taichi’s arm…how ironic… All in all, I love this episode. I am guessing, which I am not good at, the ending will be something like the three of them will once again join hands in fighting for becoming better and stronger – both at karuta and in life…

Even if Taichi has the most development we’ve seen, I think the title Chihayafuru is very good actually. It’s a play on words with her name Chihaya and a kurata card. Also, it is Chihaya who ties all the characters together. Furu means full. Not because she’s full of her self but rather full of kurata- the double meaning I mentioned. If she wasn’t so obsessed with kurata, we wouldn’t have our story in the first place. She wouldn’t have bother to make a team, get Taichi and the rest involved and even try to convince Arata to go back playing.

It will be such a shame if Chihayafuru doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Here we have obviously excellent source material that has been been brilliantly interpreted as an anime. It is my favorite of 2012 so far, and I just can’t believe how good the execution has been. And then Guilty Crown outsells by 7x??? Aargh. My faith in humanity is slipping away.

Haha3x…if you often take a look at yearly sales of dvd/bd’s animes, you’ll be very surprised to see what kind of titles that sold the most anyway^-^ I’m not saying all of those best seller are bad titles, there’re some good ones, but take a look at the rest of it. Anyway, it’s already obvious since the start that this beautiful series aren’t the kind of material that’ll attract otaku&fujoshi to buy it, while there’re the ones that willing to spend more money to buy any anime related stuffs since casual fans/common people obviously just prefer buying the manga since it’s wayyy cheaper than anime’s bd/dvd.

Ooops..I forgot to add, atleast the manga sold well(around 200-300K)per vol, although nowhere fantastic like Nana, Nodame&Kimitodo, but it’s still good nonetheless, plus the manga has already won several awards and now also being nominated as one of Tezuka Award nominees^-^ So yeah, it’s still get the recognition it’s deserved though not from the anime sales.

Poor, poor deluded Taichi. Refusing something that you’re by all means entitled to is not being strong, it’s being masochistic and selling yourself short. And if you don’t win a tournament very soon, Harada will be right. You’ll end a bitter and frustrated B-player and quit. Or didn’t you notice how there are no adults in B/C/D. They either promoted to A (where all the fun is) or they just quit.

But it will be interesting indeed how the writers will handle the fact that Taichi has very expertedly sidelined himself. Looking forward to the next Torture-Taichi-Tuesday

hah I’m in the same boat as you. I spent the entirety of this episode just muttering “I hate you arata” to myself over and over again. Now in reality I cant really say I hate his character but I’d so much rather see Taichi x chihaiya work.

Yes yes, poor Taichi and his one sided love. But hey, I’m in it for the whole ride, every character is awesome in their own right. I don’t really care about how it ends, or who ends up with who. (although I do want to see Taichi happy in the end..) I’m just glad this show exists.

I must say, Mamoru Miyano does an outstanding job as Taichi. I know he won Favourite Male Seiyuu for Best of Anime 2011, but I’m rooting for him in 2012 too. Yoshimasa Hosoya has also been amazing and hope to hear him in more shows this year.

I can’t say that Chihaya’s rushing over to Arata during the tournament was the right thing to do, but Taichi brought it upon himself. He decided to pick that exact moment, when Chihaya was worrying about him, to tell her that Arata was playing. He knew that Chihaya would get distracted by the shiny — he was either testing her, or too ashamed of his loss. I love Taichi, but he needs to gain some confidence.

I think that’s why he doesn’t want to accept Harada’s offer and “take the cheap way out”, even though he honestly deserved to be in class A. When it came down to it, too, his loss to Nishida last episode was pure luck (no matter how much Taichi beat himself up about not avoiding that in the first place, the fact is that he’s just as good as Nishida, which means he’s good enough for class A). But not by his standards. I think that in a way, Taichi is running away because he doesn’t think he’s ready. He doesn’t want to move up until he’s sure that he can face Arata as an equal. Like dustshadow, I think Taichi’s selling himself short.

Also, if Taichi’s been friend-zoned, Arata’s been rival-zoned. Seriously, Chihaya sees him as the Queen and looks up to him more than anything.

I may be the only one who feels like Chihaya ending up with Arata would be a good thing.While I do like Taichi, and I the only thing I don’t like about anime’s like this, is that even though the girl is dumb when it comes to love she knows who she likes, and feel that she might end up with taichi….

That scene where she is on the train and is talking about the poem and how its about the two childhood friends she also mentions love and she mentioned that it reminded her about Arata, I feel like that is a way of showing that Chihaya is slowing realizing that she might like Arata more that just as an awesome Karuta player. I am shipping ArataXChihaya but I still love you Taichi

What I don’t understand is where the affection comes from. Taichi has seemingly always loved her. Chihaya meanwhile played karuta with Arata and found that she loved it. There was not much after that except them parting ways. I think Taichi always help a place in his heart for Chihaya but as always, was too much of a coward (per Arata) to do anything about it. He finally meets up with her again and realizes that he is completely in love with her regardless of his GF. Taichi then goes on to form a club with her, supports her during her journey, etc.

Meanwhile, Arata sits in his house while being guilt stricken and rightly so. Chihaya does the ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ routine and builds him up as this god among gods. Arata introduced her to her dream, while Taichi has been helping her achieve it – the drive is from Arata, the effort is from Taichi.

Taichi loves her but is still too cowardly to tell her and uses his standing at karuta as his excuse. In the time it takes for Taichi to finally consider himself ‘good enough’ to confess to Chihaya, she will have already had enough sparkling water moments just looking at Arata to decides that she likes him over Taichi. Taichi has been their from the beginning of their high school quest, while Arata walks in and already stands at a higher position in Chihaya’s heart.

Whether Arata meant it that way or not, his attempt to go through Taichi to give Chihaya his phone number and mail address was such a clever scheme — it could almost be considered a declaration of war. He let Taichi know that he was romantically interested in Chihaya without specifically saying so. If Arata was a malicious character, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that he purposely strategized this to get the information he needed, all while scoping out the competition.

Ultimately, Chihaya needs to grow up before she can have any sort of successful relationship… from the manga alone, I feel like the end game is Chihaya/karuta. If this series has to end with romantic pairings, I’m still rooting for Taichi/Chihaya and Arata/Shinobu.

Why all the hate for Arata? Just like one of the commenters mentioned, Arata has been “rival-zoned” already since Day 1. He was never “higher” than Taichi in terms of romantic progress. I actually doubt we would have a couple (except for Kana and Tsutomu) once the mangaka decides to end this.

And seriously, no one actually felt that it’s more probable for Taichi to end up with Chihaya than Arata? It’s so hard to be an Arata shipper because there’s almost no character/romantic build up for him plus you get down-voted. :( I also love Taichi but even if I don’t, I won’t ever bash him for the sake of bashing.

But Arata is the guy introduced Chihaya to karuta “changing her world” and all that mumbo jumbo and he also gets all the fancy sparkly freezeframes! Of course he’s going to win ):

But you know, guess we all just like to root for who we think is the underdog. If there wasn’t so much focus on Taichi’s development I would have assumed he had lost from the get go and would have rooted for Arata (cause you know I like to root for the pair that wins). But they’ve been showing us so much of Taichi’s inner turmoil that’s it’s hard to brush it off like one pairing is more canon than the other. At least for now…

I still think Arata is going to win and the manga readers don’t seem to be refuting that. Gah. I honestly hate being on the losing side.

And nagi it’s not about disliking Arata, it’s about preferring Taichi being with Chihaya :) You know…shipping wars…I have nothing against Arata, in fact I really like him or at least what we’ve seen of him. If we weren’t already Taichi biased this episode was actually a pretty good Arata episode.

@anon: Haha you’re right. Actually it makes me happy that many Chihayafuru shippers were not just shouting “OMFGZZ i LuvZZ taichi x chihaya GTH arata” and were actually looking through the possibilities quite well which makes the discussions healthy.

@Chiyo: I agree, honestly I think both Arata and Taichi are underdogs on the romantic side of things. I just got pissed a little as an Arata shipper. Anyway, I’ve actually come to like Taichi to the point wherein even if Arata wins Chihaya I’d still be heartbroken. Well, to make it lighter for all the shippers, may the best man (or the one the mangaka chose) win. :)

Man, this summary is far too biased to one side of the love triangle. But i guess that’s fine, the way the manga is progressing at this time will leave alot of shippers hearts broken （⌒▽⌒） ψ(｀∇´)ψ （⌒▽⌒）

“You have to do the things you don’t want to do before you can do the things you truly want to do.”
This just make me want to study harder in college, even though I feel like failing one of my classes.

I have wondered this for a long time now… is Guardian Enzo a female or a male? I always thought he/she was a guy because of the name, and the composition of the writing reminds me of a male (don’t know why), but then there’s this great love for Taichi the Guardian has… maybe it’s just admiration. I apologize if I don’t have the right to ask that…

And sadly for me, I haven’t been able to watch Chihayafuru because my computer lacks the lates Adobe flashplayer; therefore I’ve been coming her to read the updates on the anime. Thanks Guardian Enzo!

‎”Long last we meet, only for me to leave hurriedly, for I could not recognize you, like the moon hidden behind the clouds.” It sounds like a love poem but it was actually for a long lost childhood friend.

What makes an author stand out from ordinary is the way it lead the audience on with all the phrases and words written. Giving out superbly decorated mixed messages, making it fascinating to interpret and analyze the many different possibilities.

I was thorn between two or more as I carefully go through each and every single alphabets, words, expression, breath and sound of this scene. Just so I wouldn’t miss the smallest of details and miss my chance to get a glimpse into the thought of such a wonderfully compose romance~

You took the words right out of my mouth, Enzo. It’s so rare for me to fall in love with, root for, and empathize with the characters of a series so completely, but after just two episodes, I can say those feelings were firmly established for Chihayafuru. And, impossibly, they’ve only increased over time.

I desperately want to own this series on DVD, and I hope that happens (Is there any way to show the licensor it has support from a monetary standpoint?). Almost as much, I want there to be a second season, as I know there’s so much more to be told.

The theme of karuta may never be something that Westerners can relate to or fully understand, but the human aspect of this series – what I see as the true beating heart – is universal and, as you said, something execuited in a truly stellar, skillful fashion.